A video of a performance by Elizabeth Hilliard. It is a dramatic ballad built entirely from three-note phrases related to each other by permutational processes. This is intended to be the enaction of a constantly developing thought process.The text was assembled from a pool of 25 words:

Caption
Setting the scene
First Action
Aria/Reflection
Second Action
Memory of Initial Scene

The background to this piece was my interest in improvised process music; more information on this can be found on the Compositions/Improvised Process Music page.

Eleven types of minute

video score, created as part of the Components series, curated by Dylan Rynhart. Performed in this version by Colm O’Hara (trb), Daniel Bodwell (db), Kate Ellis (vc), Paul Roe (clarinets) in the CFCP, Dublin, April 2010. The video is of shadows on the floor in my family home in Cumbria, UK.

The bright kids (logic ballad)

A monodrama; the character is a school-teacher. An attempt to ‘compose with words’, hence the text was written along with the music, with the aim of highlighting that the expressivity of each word resides in its sonic characteristics. Simple permutational processes are employed: basic, stripped-down poetry. Performed here in June 2011 by soprano Elizabeth Hilliard, for whom the piece was written.